Building Power: scott crow On Asking The Right Questions After Antifa

A bearded activist in a winter coat with a fuzzy hood holds a feminist antifa flag showing black and purple flags. At the Stand Up To Racism March in London on March 17, 2018. (Flickr / Tim Dennell, CC-BY-NC license)

This is the third and final part of my interview with scott crow. We discussed what comes after antifa finish driving neo-nazis and white supremacists from our streets.

In the second part of my interview, crow commented that the left is
great at building “fire brigades” but less effective at building power.

I asked crow what building power looks like to him.

“I think that it starts with asking the question, ‘What does it take to build power?’”

Because we spend so much time fighting against the constant attacks
of the far right, the ability of the left to ask for what we want has
atrophied. We should “begin to lead by asking. What is it that we want?
How do we get there? What do you want? How are you going to get there?”

“That’s a whole different set of things than saying ‘this is wrong
and we’re going to stop that.’ Do you see the difference? That’s not
even a subtle difference.”

The answers to those questions could lead to radical programs
addressing a variety of needs. These might include corner healthcare
clinics in neighborhoods, community gardens, or local alternatives to
police.

Building power in times of crisis and disaster

Times of strife also provide opportunities to begin asking these vital questions about building power.

“Disasters reveal the failures of governments and capitalism more than anything,” crow said.

He defines “disaster” in its broadest sense, not just recent climate-driven extreme weather events, like Hurricane Harvey, but also political disasters like the election of Donald Trump.

He often looks to other movements in other places for inspiration and
lessons we may be able to learn in our own struggles. Both the
Zapatistas, and the Kurds in Rojava came up repeatedly during our
discussion. Of the latter, he said:

That’s a very clear example where people said we’ve been
resisting our own exploitation and oppression and basically their own
genocide from three nation states: Turkey, Iran and Syria. So they began
to ask different questions. Part of that is defending physically
defending their physical spaces but part of it was to build their own
infrastructures.

crow’s vision of building power is a hyper local one:

We can take care of our own security, we take care of our
own food, we can exchange food with other people. We take care of our
own health care. When I say build a clinic, or when I say build food
security, I’m not talking about one clinic for 100,000 people. I’m
talking block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

He told me he wants to see more community health clinics and gardens
instead of “liquor stores and convenience stores and fucking strip
malls.”

Beyond confrontations: Seeking a cure for American alienation

Antifa have had success in exposing fascists. We can get nazis fired
or otherwise force some of them to face negative social consequences.

But what comes after that? And what about the nazis we can’t get
fired or drive from our cities, because they’re so entrenched in
profiting from hate? Similarly, although nazis are no longer mobilizing in the streets in very high numbers, many experts agree their influence on politics is still as dangerous as ever.

“The actual neonazis, the white separatists, the people who actually
believe this to the core, the people who were part of the Aryan
Brotherhood in prison, is such a small segment,” crow told me. He said
he’s more concerned about people who might still be reachable, if we can
help them find a sense of purpose. Even a relative of his, he said, has
felt the pull of this online dark side.

“He wasn’t a neo-nazi but he went down the red pill road. He grew up
in feminism but he felt alienated as a male in this country. He believed
some of the things in the past that those people say in those forums.
On Reddit, the MRAs.”

“Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self Defense,” an anthology edited by scott crow from PM Press.

Building power means we need to “shift culture” so that fascists no
longer find fertile ground. “What is this alienation that is being
tapped into by fascistic tendencies, by misogynistic tendencies?”

crow thinks that radicals and the far
left are unprepared for this work. “We’ve gotten so caught off guard as
movements … and nobody thought the Tiny Handed Orange One was ever going
to become our president. It gave space for all these Reddit people to
come out of the woodwork.”

According to crow, the left needs to build programs to appeal to
people who are often overlooked by radical organizing. For example, he
suggested the left doesn’t do enough to help people struggling with
alcoholism and addiction. Old systems like Alcoholics Anonymous seem
justifiably problematic for atheists like crow (and myself). That
doesn’t mean we should be ignoring a whole segment of the population in
our organizing.

“It is an anthology, a collection I
put together of about 40 different voices of people participated in
taking up arms in different times in the 20th century and the 21st
century in small collective ways for community self defense.”

Before co-creating the Common Ground Collective, crow helped defend
minority neighborhoods in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina from
rampaging racists and white supremacists. This helped to shape crow’s
view on guns. He sees armed struggle as a tactical choice and a
temporary one. In contrast, the far right often sees guns as a lifestyle
unto themselves. The book creates a diverse, global portrait of this
kind of limited use of guns. Groups cited range from the Zapatistas in
Mexico to the American Indian Movement.

This book doesn’t talk
about pro- or anti- or gun rights or the Constitution. It’s only about
this very specific thing: when these groups of people took up guns in
this particular way. It asks these questions like is there ways to do it
without falling into the same traps of becoming standing armies or
doing propaganda bombing or becoming macho? How do you overcome macho
culture if you have guns? Or how do you share power with guns? So we ask
as many questions as the stories are told in this book.”